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Title: Dead Center
Subtitle: A Marine Sniper's Two-Year Odyssey in the Vietnam War
Author: Ed Kugler
Narrator: Sean Pratt
Format: Unabridged
Length: 12 hrs and 9 mins
Language: English
Release date: 12-09-14
Publisher: Tantor Audio
Ratings: 4.5 of 5 out of 484 votes
Genres: Bios & Memoirs, Personal Memoirs
Publisher's Summary:
Raw, straightforward, and powerful, Ed Kugler's account of his two years as a Marine scout-sniper in Vietnam vividly captures his experiences there - the good, the bad, and the ugly. After enlisting in the Marines at 17, then being wounded in Santo Domingo during the Dominican crisis, Kugler arrived in Vietnam in early 1966. As a new sniper with the 4th Marines, Kugler picked up bush skills while attached to 3d Force Recon Company, and then joined the grunts. To take advantage of that experience, he formed the Rogues, a five-sniper team that hunted in the Co Bi-Than Tan Valley. His descriptions of long, tense waits, sudden deadly action, and countersniper ambushes are fascinating. In Dead Center, Kugler demonstrates the importance to a sniper of patience, marksmanship, bush skills, and guts - while underscoring exactly what a country demands of its youth when it sends them to war.
Members Reviews:
If not the best certainly tied for the best
Very good...best reader to be found...& not sanitized. ..you won't be disappointed . Early Vietnam told, as it was, by a Marine who told his story well. Thanks for the look back. the cander and plain language.
You did well my man
Light years beyond the American Sniper book
Only complaint was the constant reading of time as "oh" instead of "zero". That's it for negative comments.
The epilogue, written in 1999, pushes the button on continued failures to adopt "lessons learned" for the GWOT. This is a must read for anyone who wore the uniform and went into theater. No lessons in American Sniper, but this book is crammed full of them.
Detailed and personal - made me forget my problems
What was one of the most memorable moments of Dead Center?
Kugler, with just four other snipers hidden in grass but not behind any cover, report a large (over 100) contingent of very close by NVA quickly setting up two 50-caliber machine guns to annihilate a company of Marines that's out in the open in flat rice paddies.
Kugler is on the radio telling a lieutenant to call for artillery and to radio the Marine company with an order to make a fast retreat. The lieutenant is being oppositional, ordering Kugler to INSTEAD expose his team by having the five of them immediately fire their rifles on the large and heavily-armed NVA force.
Have you listened to any of Sean Pratts other performances before? How does this one compare?
It's as good as anything Sean Pratt has done, and that's saying a lot. I think Sean Pratt is one of the very best narrators of nonfiction.
Was this a book you wanted to listen to all in one sitting?
Oh, I could binge on this material like nobody's business.
Any additional comments?
This book made me finally understand: (1) Why snipers in particular write such good war memoirs; (2) How Marine and Army snipers get alienated from the larger structure; (3) That common sense learned in small teams, if it could ever be effectively tapped into, would be transformative - at any time.
Awesome!
It was an all around great book!!!!! Keeps you on your toes most of the time but overall keeps you wanting to hear more
really good book... honest and real...
being retired military I joined after Vietnam and the stupidity that he went through was there for many years after... his closing comments really sum things up..
